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They ended the call, and Rachel made herself walk back inside before her mind could get too preoccupied with all that Jack had told her. Right now, with Paige home and dinner to be finished, she needed to focus on her family. She had to trust that Jack would handle things out there while she did her very best to work toward reorienting her mind to the things she would need to care for with much more passion and purpose when this case was over and she found herself in the looming shadow of her final days.
CHAPTERSIXTEEN
Donna’s husband was running late, which was fine with her. She was running a little late, too, and wasn't prepared to throw together a hurried dinner. If Chris was going to be as late as he was saying—about eight or so—then they would end up eating separately anyway. Relieved that she didn't have to worry about the dinner, but also beyond that, Chris was going to be late, Donna slid last night's pasta leftovers into the microwave.
When she and Chris were married three years ago, they both knew that their schedules would be crazy. Chris had worked as a surgeon for the last nine years, and being that he was one of the best in the state, his schedule was usually fully booked. His final surgery of the day turned out to be a bit more complicated than he or his team had expected. He hadn't gone into details about it, but it had something to do with a patient's large intestine. In other words, not the sort of thing she wanted to be thinking about while she ate leftover pasta.
While Donna's schedule was also demanding, it wasn't as jam-packed and all over the place as Chris's usually was. She worked as a nurse at the same hospital Chris spent most of his time in. They had met during her second week on board, had started dating a month after that, and were married a year and a half later. Donna was used to the long nights in the early morning hours when Chris was called in for emergency surgeries. It could be irritating at times, but it was also one of the things she loved about him. He was very passionate about his work and truly loved saving lives. She had never heard him complain about the late-night calls or unexpected long hours.
She took her reheated dinner into the living room, where she sat on the couch and flipped on the TV. She had just settled on a sitcom re-run when her doorbell rang. She set her dinner down on the coffee table, walked over to the front door, and corrected it open just a bit. It was rare that she ever got visitors when Chris was at home, and when she did, it was usually one of the neighbors inviting them to a weekend cookout or some other high-end neighborhood activity. Sometimes it was high school students collecting donations for some activity or another.
Because it was the end of the day and she had pretty much deescalated into relaxation mode, she didn't think twice about opening the door when she saw the man standing on her porch, holding a small box with the infamous Amazon logo on the side. She didn't remember ordering anything recently but knew that Chris had a bad habit of binge-ordering books and records online.
It didn't occur to her that it was a bit strange for a delivery driver to knock on the door—especially when they had an Amazon package. Sometimes FedEx would require a signature, but not a UPS driver with an Amazon delivery.
All of this registered just a bit too late. By the time all of this occurred to her, the man was rushing forward and shoving the door open with his elbow. The door struck Donna directly in the chest. The pain was surprising and overwhelming… so unexpected that she barely even realized that she was stumbling backward and was about to fall.
The man tossed the box aside and hurried in through the doorway. He closed the door behind him and came rushing toward Donna. She opened her mouth to cry out, but he punched her in the face just as her mouth had opened. In a shocking and confusing moment, she realized that she had seen this man's face before. She was able to get a brief glimpse of it before his fists slammed into her face.
And she fell back to the floor, already tasting blood in her mouth, her frantic mind clutched to recent memory. She knew where she had seen this face. She'd seen it within the last few weeks, as a matter of fact.
A patient,she thought.He was at the hospital for something…
He continued to come at her, this time raising a foot and slamming it into her ribs. When he did, just before the pain exploded in her right side, she noted that he was wearing a plastic covering over his shoes. It was the last thing she saw before the world went momentarily black, and all of the breath went slipping right out of her body. She tried to crawl away, but she could hear the strange sound of his plastic-covered boots following her.
“Please,” she gasped, still unable to draw in a breath. She was pretty sure he’d broken a few ribs with the kick, and her mouth was filling with blood from the punch.
She did her best to roll over, trying to get to her feet, confused and terrified of what was happening. He was sneering at her as he drew back his foot again. She blocked this one, but it was still so hard that she was pretty sure she broke three fingers on her left hand. She cried out in little more than a gasp, and then he was on the floor with her.
There was something in his right hand…a hammer, from the looks of it. But he was holding it weirdly so that the side of it rather than the actual hammer-end or the claw would be used.
“I don’t… whaaaaa…” she said.
But he was raising the hammer over his shoulder, intending to bring it forward like a hard right-handed jab. Her vision was blurry, but just before the hammer came rushing forward, Donna noticed two things. First, the man seemed to be tottering a bit, almost like a drunk man trying to walk as he held the hammer steady.
And second, she remembered why he’d been at the hospital. She’d come rushing into his room to the tune of his flatlining monitor. She and three other nurses had worked on him, breaking out the paddles and adjusting the meds he’d been hooked to. The bastard had flatlined, and she’d brought him back. So why was he—
Because he was swaying, the hammer only clipped her on the side of the head. It still hurt worse than anything she’d ever experienced. She didn’t know if someone could actuallyfeeltheir skull crack, but she sure as hell heard it. And as she tried to scream, he repeated the motion.
This time, he struck her as he’d intended. The world went black again, but this time her sight didn’t come back.
Donna faded out of the world with that memory stuckin her mind: of her killer lying dead on a table as she worked fervently to bring him back.
CHAPTERSEVENTEEN
Rachel’s eyes flew open suddenly, her heart hammering in her chest. There was an alarm sounding, something buzzing… something…
No. It was just a cellphone buzzing. And for the second time that day, Rachel woke up unexpectedly. This time, she felt more startled than she had during her daytime nap. It seemed to take an unnecessary amount of time for her to not only come fully awake but to piece together the events that had led to her falling asleep again in the first place.
When she opened her eyes, she found herself on the couch. Jack was beside her, his head lolling back, also slowly coming out of sleep. With this tidbit of information, she worked backward, piecing the evening and night together. She and Grandma Tate had played Uno with Paige, and then they’d watched a bit of television. Rachel had then tucked Paige in for bed, only to find a text message from Jack waiting for her when she got back downstairs.
He’d not been much help at Archer Street, aside from filling the DEA agents in on everything he’d seen when he had stepped into the house earlier in the day. He’d texted to ask if he could come over to hang out for a bit after he wrote up his report. She’d naturally agreed, and he had come over just after 10:00.
They both sat up now, realizing that they’d dozed off on the couch while watching a movie. They had woken up at the same time due to the buzzing of Jack’s phone on the coffee table. When he picked it up, still quite groggy from being startled awake, Rachel saw that it was 12:17. When he answered the call, he walked into the kitchen as a courtesy; anyone talking above a whisper in the living room could usually be heard upstairs.
Rachel sat on the edge of the couch, startled and slightly out of it as she listened in. It was a brief conversation, and she wasn’t able to figure out much based on Jack’s side of the conversation.
“This is Agent Rivers. Yeah… okay, and when was this? Sure. Okay. Text me an address. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
